Rukhsana, a researcher, studies a petition written late in 1857 by a grain trader of Bareilly. He complains that soon after the sepoys of the station rose, crowds from the nearby villages came into the town. They broke into his house and the houses of several other traders, carried away their goods and set some of the houses on fire. In the same file she finds a poster that had been put up on a city wall. Written in Urdu, it calls on the people of the town to rise and drive out the firangis.
Why did the villagers in Rukhsana's source turn on the trader and his neighbours?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Peasants saw moneylenders and the rich as oppressors and also as allies of the British.
Option (1) The traders had refused to supply grain and money to the rebel sepoys of the station. — Incorrect. The anger came from the peasants who joined the revolt. It grew from the way they saw moneylenders.
Option (2) Peasants saw moneylenders and the rich as oppressors and also as allies of the British. — Correct. As ordinary people joined, the targets widened. In towns like Bareilly, peasants saw moneylenders and the rich as oppressors and as allies of the British, so their houses were looted.
Option (3) The traders had hidden the Company's treasury in their houses before the rising. — Incorrect. The sepoys plundered the treasury itself in the cantonments. The traders' houses were attacked for what they stood for in the peasants' eyes.
Option (4) The Mughal emperor had ordered the traders' property to be seized for the war. — Incorrect. No order from Bahadur Shah lay behind these attacks. They came from the peasants' own view of the rich.
NCERT (2026-27): “1.1 How the mutinies began … “In most places their houses were looted and destroyed. The mutiny in the sepoy ranks quickly became a rebellion.” “There was a general defiance of all kinds of authority and hierarchy.” |